A lack of career and skills development opportunities leads to organizational churn, according to a survey released by TEKsystems.

The survey asked IT leaders if an employee has ever left their organization due to lack of career and/or skills development opportunities; 60% answered yes while 40% said no. When IT professionals were asked if they ever left a job due to lack of career and/or skills development opportunities, 53% answered yes and 47% said no. Additionally, 82% of IT leaders and 87% of IT professionals agreed that training and development programs increase organizational loyalty.

“This illustrates that organizations have a proven method at their disposal to increase loyalty and reduce churn — assuming that these programs are focused on the professional development and training that employees feel they need,” the report stated.

The survey found “zombie training” is the norm, with less than one-quarter of IT leaders reporting that their programs have an executive sponsor or are overseen by a C-level executive (such as a chief learning officer). Furthermore, less than half agreed that their training and development efforts lead to positive business outcomes.

“We’ve found that these ‘zombie’ training and development programs are rampant throughout organizations, lacking direction and focus, autonomous but without authority,” said TEKsystems Research Manager Jason Hayman. “A minority of IT leaders indicate their organizations have a chief learning officer, or map training and development to business outcomes. Meanwhile, the majority of IT leaders indicate that they have training and development programs in place. As a result, many training and development programs exist in a non-strategic vacuum, and have limited impact on the organization.”

Hayman continued: “That’s unfortunate, since it appears organizations acknowledge they offer training and development in order to create higher levels of employee loyalty and retention. For maximized effectiveness it’s imperative that these programs are revamped to be strategic and properly structured and implemented to create real business benefit.”

Additionally, leaders overestimate awareness of programs. Although nearly three-quarters of IT leaders believe employees are aware of programs, less than 60% of professionals know they exist.

The survey included more than 300 IT leaders (i.e., chief information officers, IT vice presidents, IT directors, IT hiring managers) and 900 IT professionals.